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SLAVERY 

AND THE RACE PROBLEM 

IN THE SOUTH. 

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE 
TO THE STATE OF GEORGIA. 



Address of 

HON. WM. H. FLEMING, 

Before the Alumni Society of the State University, 

Athens, June 19, 1906. 



Boston : 

Dana Estes & Company, 

Publish EKS. 



ion one of the highest honors to which any American can aspire. 
I deem your speech a real milestone in the path of progress, and 
with your consent, I should be glad to reprint it in an attractive 
form to extend its circulation as far as I can. 

Yours sincerely, 

Dana Estes." 



A prompt reply contained the consent to the publica- 
tion, and in offering it to the public, the editor felt that the 
endorsement of the leaders of political and moral move- 
ments throughout the country would be of service in ex- 
tending its influence. He, therefore, addressed President 
Roosevelt for this purpose, and the following are excerpts 
from the correspondence regarding this subject: 

"July 23rd, 1906. 
*' To THE President, 

My Dear Sir : — 

I think it beyond doubt that your atten- 
tion has been attracted to the patriotic and important speech of 
the Honorable William H. Fleming of Georgia. 

I have asked of him, as per enclosed copy of my letter to 
him of July 5th, the privilege of reprinting this in an attractive 
form to extend its benefits as widely as possible. It seems to me 
to mark an epoch in this agitation, and I am informed that since 
the delivery of this speech the Committee of the Georgia legisla- 
ture has reported against the passage of the disfranchisement 
bill without a dissenting vote. I believe this to be largely the re- 
sult of Mr. Fleming's great speech. 

If it would be entirely proper for you, in view of your exalted 
official position, to commend the sentiments of this speech, and 
permit such commendation to be used in an introduction to the 
speech, I should be pleased to receive the same from you. 

The publication of the speech is not intended as a commer- 
cial transaction. ***** 

Yours respectfully, 

Dana Estes." 



"Oyster Bay, N. Y,, July 25, 1906. 
" My Dear Mr. Estes : 

I am glad that you are to publish ex-Congress- 
man Fleming's noteworthy speech in more permanent form than 
it is possible ordinarily to publish such speeches. ***** 

Mr. Fleming's speech is admirable, alike for its fearlessness, 
its sanity, and the high purpose which it shows. The problems 
of any one part of our great common country should be held to 
be the problems of all our country — at least to the extent that 
all our people should give their hearty and respectful sympathy 
to those who in their own neighborhood, are trying to solve their 
particular problems aright. In each locality we have our own 
special and peculiar difiEicuUies ; and when a brave and honest 
man does good work in meeting the peculiar difficulties of his 
own region, he not only does good therein, but by example and 
influence he helps Americans in other parts of our great common- 
wealth manfully to grapple with the various evils which they in 
their turn, have to strive against. 

Sincerely yours, 

Theodore Roosevelt." 

At the writer's especial request, Mr. Fleming has fur- 
nished him with a few excerpts from the many letters of 
approval which he has received from all parts of the coun- 
try; and especially from leaders of opinion in the South. 
In his reply he says : " Many of the strongest commenda- 
tions which my speech has received have been given to 
me in person by word of mouth, and, consequently, do not 
appear in written form that could be used." Among the 
many received by letters may be quoted the following from 
Judge John L. Hopkins of Atlanta: 

"I have read your speech more than once. It is satisfying. 
In some of its parts it has been comforting to me — in all, inter- 
esting. The preparation of such a paper is a valuable service to 
the state. It was needed — it was just the right thing." 



(Hon. Harry Hammond, Beach Island, S. C, letter June 27th.) 
"Van Hoist, a northern sympathizer, said a century and a 
half must elapse before a verdict could be reached as to the wis- 
dom of emancipation. The solution of the race problem advo- 
cated by you — Justice to the Negro — needs no time for its 
confirmation. It is registered among the indisputable truths of 
eternity itself." 

(Former Congressman W.m. H. Felton, Cartersville, Ga.) 

"I thank you with all my he:irt for the address made at the 
Athens Commencement. Yours were words of sober caution 
and profound prudential wisdom." 

(Emory Speer, U. S. District Judge, letter June 27th.) 

" I have received the pamphlet print of your great speech on 
Slavery and the Race Problem in the South. I had the happi- 
ness of hearing this appeal to the intelligence and sense of 
justice of our people, and I cannot well overstate the pleasure it 
gave me to see with what enthusiasm the Alumni body of our 
Alma Mater present received such a fearless and truthful exposi- 
tion of great and salutary truths." 

(James R. Randal, New Orleans, Author of " Maryland, My 
Maryland," letter June 27th.) 

"The speech was a masterpiece. No one else could have 
done it." 

(Judge VV. H. HuLSEY, Atlanta, Ga., letter June 29th.) 

"Reading your address from start to finish, it pleases me to 

say that every patriotic Georgian ought to feel grateful to you for 

giving to your state a clear, forceful and masterly presentation in 

your Athens address of what may be termed the Negro Problem." 

(Hon. MooRFiELD Storey, Boston, Mass., letter June 29th.) 
"It is a courageous thing to stand up in one's country and 
speak as you have done, and such courage is very much needed 
today. You have never lacked that quality, and I hope your 
example will be an inspiration to others." 



(Judge Joel Branhan of Rome, Ga., letter June 23rd.) 

" I want to thank you for your grand speech on the disfran- 
chisement of the negro before the Alumni of the University of 
Georgia on the 19th inst., which I have just had the pleasure of 
reading. It is truthful, honest and unanswerable." 

(R. F. Campbell, Ashville, N. C., letter June 25th.) 

"In intellectual strength and moral soundness, it takes the 
place easily among the very best things ever written or spoken 
on this subject." 

(Congressman W. M. Howard, Atlanta, Ga., letter June 25 th.) 

" I am very glad to get the speech, not because it is a reve- 
latiori to me of your views on this question, but especially to know 
precisely what you said in view of the criticism I have seen in 
the papers about it. The speech is up to the very best of your 
ability, and I am proud of you as a friend and a citizen of Geor- 
gia because of the pertinence and power of the speech. I am 
glad that you made it when and where you did. It is the strong- 
est and clearest voice that has been heard since this issue became 
state wide." 

(Prof. W. S. Bean, Clinton, S. C, letter June 25th.) 

"I am delighted with the address, its calmness and fairness 
of statement, its ample basis of fact, its appeal to a sense of 
justice and fairness and its belief in the principle that no wrong 
can be inflicted for political purposes which will not certainly re- 
act upon the agent at sometime. ***** j ^j^ gj^jj 
you had such a splendid opportunity, such a fine, intelligent 
audience, and that you rose to the occasion in a speech that is 
masterly, statesmanlike and Christian. May you live long to 
keep up such a good work and find staunch friends to stand by 
you and your principles." 

(C. P. Goodyear, Brunswick, Ga., letter June 27th.) 

"That was a great and statesmanlike and patriotic speech of 
yours at the University. The day will come when wise men in 
Georgia, — good men everywhere, — will appreciate the calm 
temper and patriotic thought which dictated it." 



(George Foster Peabody, New York City, letter June 28th.) 
"The more I think of the matter, the more do I beHeve that 
you have done a far-reaching service and that it may well prove, 
to be the case that no address during the last twenty years has 
been more important." 

(Ex-Gov. Allen D. Candler, Atlanta, Ga., letter July 4th.) 
"I have read it with a great deal of interest, and it is with- 
out exaggeration a gem, and every loyal Georgian who knows 
Georgia and her career in the past and the apparent insuperable 
obstacles her people have had to surmount will thank you for it. 
* * * I think no fitter occasion could have been found for 
the utterance of the lofty sentiments contained in it than the 
Commencement of the State University before the Alumni Asso- 
ciation of the oldest state college in America." 

(T. C. Betterton, Dalton, Ga., letter July 8th.) 
" Please allow me to say that you have in this address per- 
formed the highest possible service to your state and to the 
South. I would that every citizen in our state could read it 
thoroughly." 

(Rev. Walker Lewis, Augusta, Ga., letter July 15th.) 

"I have just finished the best Sunday reading I have seen in 
many years. It is your great article on the Race Question. It 
is masterful, it is unanswerable, it is worthy of a great statesman ; 
it is Christian philosophy and righteousness." 

(Francis Lynde Stetson, Sterlington, Rockland Co., N. Y., 

letter July 8th.) 

"I consider it the best presentation of the various phases of 
this difficult question that I have ever seen, and his proposed 
solution through the ordinary observation of the universal man- 
date of the moral law attests his sanity." 

"Lake George, N. Y., 3rd July, 1906. 
"The Honorable William H. Fleming, Augusta, Ga. 
My Dear Sir : — 

I cannot forbear writing to you of my 
delight at your great speech, delivered before the Alumni Society 



at the University of Georgia. In its insight, its iron logic, its 
political perspective, and its high morality, it is, I think, one of 
the greatest constructive addresses of the time ; and these qual- 
ities mark it as belonging to that class of political literature to 
which the speeches of Webster, Hayne and Lincoln belong. I 
would not be guilty of flattery, but such an address at such a 
time and place is an event which gives one a legitimate pride in 
human kind, and a joy in the mere fact of living. I have long 
felt that this time with its problems, on the principle that great 
occasions make great men, is one which must call into being and 
action men of the first order, men who are capable of seeing the 
significance of the time and of meeting its great demands. I 
think the men are coming, and I hail your speech as a sign that 
they are coming. Faithfully yours, 

Samuel H. Bishop." 

(Prof. Chas. Eliot Norton, Cambridge, Mass., letter Aug. nth.) 
"Nothing could be better than its spirit. It would be a most 
encouraging sign in these confused days should your appeal to 
the intelligent and moral sympathy of the community be heeded 
and responded to." 

(Richard C. Ogden, Madison Ave., New York, letter Aug. 12th.) 
" I appreciate your great contribution to the solution of the 
one great question that retards the growth of American unity." 

(H. B. Brown, Ex- Justice Sup. Court, U. S., letter Aug. 5th.) 
'■' I cannot refrain from expressing to you my appreciation of 
your masterly address of June 19th upon Slavery and the Race 
Problem. It is quite the most satisfactory of any I have seen 
upon that subject. I cannot doubt your views will ultimately 
prevail in the South, as they do already in the North. I have 
always believed the question of suffrage would finally be solved 
by the adoption of an educational or property qualification, 
which, if fairly administered, would answer the purpose. I do 
not think anyone should be disfranchised solely on account of 
color." 



The writer has made no attempt to collect the opinions 



of the Press, though he has seen many that were as em- 
phatic in commendation as are the personal opinions here- 
with submitted. He can not, however, refrain from a brief 
excerpt from an editorial of the "Augusta (Ga.) Chron- 
icle:" 

"The speech wa.s pronounced by all who heard it or read it 
to be the greatest ever delivered from the University platform." 

It may not be inappropriately stated that commercial 
considerations have had no part in influencing the publica- 
tion of this speech, that the profits arising from its publica- 
tion will be devoted to educational work in the South, and 
that the editor, and not the author, is responsible for the 
insertion of the quotations on page facing the title page of 
the work, and the portrait of the author. 

Dana Estes. 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM 
IN THE SOUTH. 



Brothers of the Alumni Society , Ladies and Gentlemen : 

It is my purpose to discuss slavery and the race 
problem in the South, with special reference to our own 
State of Georgia, 

No public issue is more deserving of thoughtful con- 
sideration by our people, and no occasion could be more 
fit for its discussion. This audience is qualified in head 
and heart to appreciate at its true value every argument 
that may be advanced, and this platform at our chief seat 
of learning is so lifted up, that words spoken here may be 
heard in all parts of the State, echoing among the " Hills 
of Habersham" and over the "Sea Marshes of Glynn." 

If there be any one present perturbed by a secret 
doubt as to the propriety of my bringing this subject and 
this occasion together in the midst of the pending political 
campaign in Georgia, let me hasten to allay his fears with 
the assurance that I shall carefully refrain from all offensive 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

personal allusions. Speaking to this very point some 
weeks before his fatal illness, Chancellor Hill cordially 
approved of my selection of the race problem for discus- 
sion at this time before the alumni of the university, and 
he added with characteristic broadmindedness: "I wish 
my platform at Athens to be a place for the freest expres- 
sion of honest thought." 

At the outset, we should realize that if we are to make 
any genuine progress toward a right solution of our prob- 
lem, we must approach it in a spirit of the utmost candor, 
and with an eye single to the ascertainment of the truth. 
The pessimist "sailing the Vesuvian Bay" Hstens for the 
dreaded rumblings of the distant mountain — blind to the 
wondrous beauties of earth and sky about him. The 
optimist floating down the placid upper stream pictures to 
himself an endless panorama of peaceful landscapes — deaf 
to the thundering cataract of Niagara just below him. 
But better than pessimism and better than optimism is 
that philosophy which faces facts as they are, and cour- 
ageously interprets their meaning. 

Slavery and Christianity. 

In the earlier civilizations slavery was the rule, not the 
exception. But with the advent of the Christ and His 
teachings, a silent, gentle, yet all-compelling force began 

lO 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

its work on the universal heart of humanity. Christianity 
adjusted itself to existing governmental institutions, in- 
cluding slavery. But it inculcated such lofty doctrines of 
love and duty, and created such vivid conceptions of a 
personal God and Father of us all, that it was only a ques- 
tion of time when Christian peoples could not hold in 
slavery those of their own faith and blood. 

In England in 1696 the doctrine had obtained wide 
acceptance that Christian baptism of itself worked a legal 
manumission of the slave. Argument to that effect was 
urged by able lawyers in the court of King's Bench in the 
suit of Chamberlain v. Herney, but the case went off on 
another ground, and that point was not decided. About 
the same time, however, the colonies of Maryland, Vir- 
ginia and South Carolina passed laws that Christian bap- 
tism should not free the negro slave, "any opinion or 
matter to the contrary notwithstanding." Thus we see a 
recognition of the necessity at that period of our history of 
controlling by statutory enactments this expanding senti- 
ment of Christian brotherhood among the masses of the 
people, so as to prevent it from embracing the alien negro 
race. 

The march of Christian civilization had put an end to 
white slavery, but negro slavery still flourished, chiefly be- 

II 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

cause the negro was of a different race-blood from his 
masters. Oneness in faith and blood had grown to mean 
freedom for the white man. But oneness in faith, without 
oneness in blood, still meant slavery for the negro. 

Indeed, negro slavery as a historical institution in 
Western civilization occupies a unique position of its own. 
It began in the fifteenth century when white slavery had 
practically ceased. Most other slaveries were incidental 
results of wars. Negro slavery originated in commerce, 
in trade and barter, and so continued until it was sup- 
pressed. 

Justification of Negro Slavery Based on Race- 
Inferiority. 

When in later 3^ears the institution was summoned be- 
fore the bar of the world's public opinion, its most logical 
and profound defenders admitted the wrongfulness of white 
slavery, but justified negro slavery on the plea of the 
natural inferiority of the negro race. 

Alexander Stephens, then vice-president of the South- 
ern Confederacy, in his famous Corner-Stone Speech at 
Savannah in March, i86i, said: "Many governments 
have been founded upon the principle of subordination 
and serfdom of certain classes of the same race. Such 
were, and are, in violation of the laws of nature. Our sys- 

12 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

tern contains no such violation of nature's laws. With us, 
all the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are 
equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro ; sub- 
ordination is his place." * * * * Referring to the 
Confederacy, he declared: "Its foundations are laid, its 
corner stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is 
not equal to the white man, that slavery — subordination 
to the superior race — is his natural and normal con- 
dition." 

The fact of race inequality here stated cannot well be 
denied. But there is still a fatal flaw in the logic. That 
flaw lies in the assumption that a superior race has the 
right to hold an inferior race in slavery. A race can not 
be justly deprived of liberty merely because it is relatively 
inferior to another. If so, all other branches of the human 
family could justly be reduced to slavery by the highest, 
most masterful branch — and that mastery could only be 
determined by force of arms. The obligation of the supe- 
rior to lead and direct does not carry with it the right to 
enslave. 

Mr. Stephens further declared in his speech: "It is 
upon this, as I have stated, our social fabric is firmly 
planted, and I can not permit myself to doubt the ultimate 

13 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

success of the full recognition of this principle throughout 
the civilized and enlightened world," 

Here we have one of the ablest intellects of his day not 
only asserting that negro slavery was legally and morally 
right, but predicting that its recognition would become 
universal throughout the civilized world — a prediction 
made within five years of its abolition in the United States, 
and within twenty-seven years of its abolition in Brazil, 
which marked the final disappearance of human slavery as 
a legalized institution among civilized peoples. 

Let me say in passing, that this Corner-Stone speech 
is not to be found in the authorized volume containing the 
biography and speeches of Mr. Stephens. One can scarce- 
ly suppress the question : Did the great commoner prefer 
for posterity to judge him by other speeches? Certain it 
is, that the views he expressed on negro slavery did not 
spring from hardness of heart, or want of sympathy with 
any suffering creature on earth. At his death, his negro 
body servant in tearful accents pronounced upon him this 
noble eulogy: "Mars Alec was kinder to dogs than most 
men is to folks." 

But Mr. Stephens was defending the then existing in- 
stitution of slavery handed down to his people by their 

14 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

fathers, recognized by historical analogies from the Bible, 
and sanctioned by the Federal Constitution. His moral 
nature was uncompromising. There was no way to adjust 
that moral nature to existing conditions except by making 
the assumption, which he did make, of the right of a supe- 
rior race to enslave an inferior race. 

If race environment could so warp the judgment of a 
great intellect like that of Alexander Stephens, other men 
may well be cautious lest they miss the truth. 

We need not stop to discuss whether the North or 
South was the more responsible for negro slavery in 
America. It takes two to make a bargain. Northern 
traders sold and Southern planters bought. If Charleston, 
South Carohna, was one of the chief ports of destination 
for slave trading vessels, Salem, Massachusetts, was one of 
the chief ports from whence those vessels sailed. 

In the earlier days of the Southern colonies there were 
many strong protests against negro slavery. But once 
established it continued to grow and flourish until we 
reached those unhappy days foreshadowed by Mr. Madi- 
son, when he said in the constitutional convention of 1787 
that the real antagonism would not arise between the large 
States on the one hand and the small States on the other, 
as many seemed to fear, but that "The institution of 

15 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

slavery and its consequences formed the line of discrim- 
ination." 

Slavery the Irritating Cause of the War. 

No historian can ever truthfully assert that the men 
who bore the banner of the Confederacy in victory and in 
defeat with such matchless courage and heroic sacrifice 
were moved only by the selfish purpose of holding their 
black fellowmen in bondage. They were inspired by the 
noblest sentiments of patriotism. So far from being trait- 
ors to the Constitution of their fathers, which Mr. Glad- 
stone declared was the " most wonderful work ever struck 
off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man," 
they reverenced that great instrument- next to the Bible. 
So far from trampling it under foot, they held it up as 
their shield. They appealed to the North and West to 
recognize the binding obligation of that Constitution, as 
interpreted by the highest court, only to hear it denounced 
at last as "a covenant with death and an agreement with' 
hell." 

And yet, we must in candor admit that the truthful 
historian will write it down that slavery was the particular 
irritating cause that forced on the conflict of arms between 
the sections, though deeper causes lay at the foundation of 
our sectional differences on centralization and State rights. 

i6 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

When Robert Toombs made his memorable farewell 
speech in the United States Senate on January 7, 1 861, he 
laid down five propositions, setting forth the contentions of 
the South, which, if granted, would have averted disunion. 
Every one of those five propositions was a clear cut, logi- 
cal deduction from the original meaning and intent of the 
Constitution, and all five of them centred around the insti- 
tution of slavery. 

Again, when the conflict was over and the Constitution 
was amended at three separate times, two of these amend- 
ments, the thirteenth and fifteenth, referred exclusively to 
slavery, and the other, the fourteenth, referred chiefly to 
slavery. No other historical facts, though there are many, 
need to be cited to prove that slavery was the immediate 
precipitating cause of the Civil War. 

The Thirteenth Amendment. 
The thirteenth amendment, ratified in 1865, abolishing 
slavery, was a legitimate and necessary result of the arbi- 
trament of the sword. Mr. Lincoln at first declared that 
the purpose of the war, on the part of the government, was 
to preserve the Union and not to free the slaves. But the 
progress of events had rendered him powerless to confine 
the struggling forces of social upheaval within that limita- 

17 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

tion — even if his personal views had undergone no 
change. 

Great was the relief to many thoughtful minds in the 
South when this fruitful cause of sectional contention had 
been removed. In an address delivered from this platform 
in 1 87 1, Benjamin H. Hill gave thanks in fervid metaphor 
that the "dusky Helen" had left the crumbHng walls of 
Troy, and that Southern genius, once "bound like Prome- 
theus" to the rock of slavery, had been loosed from its 
bonds. 

The Fourteenth Amendment. 

The fourteenth amendment, ratified in 1868, was a 
combination of judicial wisdom in the first section, of fruit- 
less compromise in the second section, and of political 
proscription in the third section. 

The first section of this amendment must now be re- 
garded as one of the very best parts of the entire instru- 
ment. It gave for the first time an authorative definition 
of United States citizenship, and forbade any state to 
abridge the privileges of such citizens or to deprive any 
person of life, liberty or property without due process of 
law, or to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the 
equal protection of the laws. We had lived nearly three- 
quarters of a century under a government that had no 

18 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

constitutional or statutory definition of its own citizenship, 
and with no sufficient jurisdiction in its courts to give ade- 
quate protection to the equal rights now attaching to that 
citizenship. 

What constituted one a citizen of the United States 
had long been a subject of discussion in the public jour- 
nals, in the executive departments and in the courts. The 
Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott case in 1857, decided 
that a person of African descent, whether slave or free, 
was not, and could not be a citizen of a State or of the 
United States. That decision was, of course, superseded 
by the fourteenth amendment. 

This first section was profound in its wisdom and far- 
reaching in its effect upon the rights of life, liberty and 
property, not only of blacks but of whites. That eminent 
Southern jurist, the Hon. Hannis Taylor, referring specially 
to this section, has well said: "From a purely scientific 
point of view the Constitution of the United States never 
reached its logical completion until after the adoption of 
the fourteenth amendment." 

The omission from the original Constitution of a defi- 
nition of United States citizenship and of a distinct provi- 
sion against State encroachment on equal rights attaching 
thereto, carried with it a deep significance. 

19 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

Few facts in our history point more unerringly to the 
conclusion that in the minds of the framers of that instru- 
ment, the paramount allegiance of the citizen was to his 
State, and not to the United States. It was this sense of 
duty which properly constrained Lee and other lovers of 
the Union to surrender their high commissions in the 
Federal army and cast their fortunes with their own seced- 
ing States. Happily, the future holds for us no possibility 
of the recurrence of that divided allegiance. 

Historically, under the Constitution, the South was 
right, both as to slavery and secession, but the simple 
truth is that public opinion on those two subjects had out- 
grown the Constitution. 

No man contributed more to the development of pub- 
lic opinion against disunion than did Mr. Webster. When 
he made his great speech in 1830 in reply to Mr. Hayne 
closing with that matchless tribute to the Union flag: 
" The broad ensign of the Republic, now known and hon- 
ored throughout the world, still full high advanced" — he 
created and vitalized and electrified Union sentiment 
throughout the length and breadth of the land. That 
speech, more than the word or deed of any other one man, 
prepared the way for the coming of Lincoln, and made 
possible the vast armies of Grant. After all, should not 

20 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

Webster be given first place in the Hall of Fame dedicated 
to Saviprs of the Union? 

The Fifteenth Amendment. 

The fifteenth amendment, ratified in 1872, prohibited 
the United States or any State, in prescribing suffrage 
qualifications, from discriminating against citizens of the 
United States on account of race, color or previous condi- 
tion of servitude. It did not confer the ballot upon any 
one — it only prohibited discrimination on account of a 
specified difference. The right to vote is not a privilege 
or attribute of national citizenship under either the four- 
teenth or fifteenth amendment; but the right to be ex- 
empt from discrimination in voting on account of race is 
an attribute of national citizenship under the fifteenth 
amendment. 

This amendment was at the time of its adoption a 
doubtful and dangerous experiment — but once made, it is 
beyond recall. 

It embodied a distinct addition to the principle set out 
in the second section to the fourteenth amendment, which 
latter impliedly permitted a State to deny the ballot to the 
negro if it were willing to suffer the penalty of a propor- 
tionate reduction of representation in the lower house of 
Congress. 

21 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

So far as the negro is concerned, the second section of 
the fourteenth amendment was a political compromise 
against him, while the fifteenth amendment was a com- 
plete declaration of his equal suffrage rights. 

A resolution for a fourteenth amendment, in almost 
the identical words finally used in this second section in 
1868, had been up for discussion in the Senate as early as 
1866. Charles Sumner then denounced it as "a compro- 
mise of human rights, the most immoral, indecent and 
utterly shameful of any in our history." 

Mr. Blaine, in his book, "Twenty Years in Congress," 
took the position that the enactment of the fifteenth 
amendment operated as a practical repeal of the second 
section of the fourteenth amendment. He says: "Before 
the adoption of the fifteenth amendment, if a State should 
exclude the negro from suffrage the next step would be 
for Congress to exclude the negro from the basis of appor- 
tionment. After the adoption of the fifteenth amendment, 
if a State should exclude the negro from suffrage, the next 
step would be for the Supreme Court to declare the act 
was unconstitutional and therefore null and void." 

Some latter-day statesmen, who have introduced bills 
in Congress to reduce Southern representation, do not 
seem to agree with Mr. Blaine. 

22 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

Verily, if the party of Sumner should ever abandon the 
vindication of the fifteenth amendment by substituting for 
it the compromise of the fourteenth amendment, the shade 
of that eminent statesman would surely be moved to indig- 
nation and contempt — if it still concerns itself with mun- 
dane political affairs. Such a substitute-compromise now 
could bring no good to either whites or blacks of the 
South. It would work evil and evil only. 
Some Reasons for Adopting the Fifteenth Amendment. 

The fifteenth amendment was naturally received with 
much bitterness by the white people of the South, because 
many of them interpreted it to mean that our political 
enemies of the North, who held control of the government, 
intended thereby to doom the South to perpetual negro 
domination. 

No doubt many of such advocates were moved by pre- 
judice and hate, but we of the South, in this day, must not 
blind ourselves to the fact that this amendment was advo- 
cated by some men then in public life who were not con- 
trolled by such base motives, but were patriotically striving 
to settle a great fundamental question of government on 
an enduring basis. 

Let us not forget that when Congress passed the joint 
resolution submitting the fifteenth amendment to the States 

23 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

for adoption, the negroes had already been made citizens 
of the United States by the fourteenth amendment, and it 
was impossible to conjoin that status of citizenship with a 
total exclusion of the negro race from the ballot without 
undermining some of the foundation principles of our 
representative Republic. 

Bear in mind, also, that at the time when Congress 
acted on that resolution in 1869, the negro had already 
exercised the right of suffrage under the reconstruction 
acts of Congress, beginning in 1867. It was not under the 
fifteenth amendment, but under the prior reconstruction 
acts, that the negroes cast their first ballots. 

So that the issue then was, not whether to give the 
negroes something they had never possessed, but whether 
to deny them in the future a privilege they had already 
actually enjoyed. 

The Southern States were expecting soon to be re- 
stored to political autonomy. What stand would the 
white people of those States take as to the rights of their 
former slaves? To what extremes of pillage and slaughter 
might not the millions of negroes go under fear of partial 
or total re-enslavement? These and other questions were 
hard to answer. To whatever point of the political hori- 
zon the thoughtful patriot turned his gaze, the clouds were 

24 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

dark and portentous. A crisis was at hand. It had to be 
met. 

Giving the ballot to five million of newly-freed slaves, 
of an inferior or backward race, ignorant, unaccustomed to 
do or think for themselves, could not have been the delib- 
erate act of wise statesmanship, but only the choice of 
what seemed to be the lesser of two evils. In truth, the 
whole plan seems to have been an effort not only to oblit- 
erate at once, as with a stroke of the pen, all distinctions 
imposed by law, but to ignore all distinctions imposed by 
nature. 

Many thoughtful men at the North are now of the 
opinion that it would have been far better had the military 
control in the South been continued and the ballot 
withheld for a time, at least, from the freed man, and 
finally bestowed upon them by degrees. But that is a 
dead issue now. 

As a practical measure of procedure, the fifteenth 
amendment was in many respects harsh and cruel toward 
the white people of the South, but theoretically it was 
necessary to round out the Constitution of a representative 
Republic, based on that equality of citizenship before the 
law which had already been foreshadowed by the thir- 
teenth and fourteenth amendments. 

25 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

We may well thank God that the South has recovered 

from the immediate shock of these rough post-bellum 

operations in political surgery. In comparison to the past 

— with its civil war and its reconstruction — the future can 

hold no terrors for us. Only let us act with wisdom and 

not lose w^hat we have gained through our suffering. 

Any Future Suffrage Amendment Will Increase Power 

of Congress. 

The fifteenth amendment may, by negative acquies- 
cence of the American people, become for a time a dead 
letter, but that three-fourths of the forty-five or more 
States will ever afifirmatively repeal it for the purpose of 
allowing five or six Southern States to withhold from our 
negro citizens, as a race, the right to the ballot, is, to my 
mind, an hallucination too extreme for serious consider- 
ation. 

If these post-bellum amendments of the Constitution 
bearing upon slavery shall ever be altered by future 
amendments, the alteration will be in the direction of 
placing under Federal control the entire subject of suf- 
frage qualifications in all National and State elections. 
The unmistakable trend of our political and social develop- 
ment from the beginning of the government has been 
toward the centre, not away from it. The centripetal force 

26 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

has been stronger than the centrifugal force. Under a law 
of social gravitation all the parts have been drawn more 
intimately into one national unity. 

To suppose that this national authority would of its 
own accord emasculate itself and surrender its own present 
consolidated power back to the former diverse elements 
from which it was wrested, would be to reverse every 
record of political history, and to ignore every lesson of 
political philosophy. 

Indeed, when the resolution for the fifteenth amend- 
ment was under discussion in the Senate in 1869, an 
amendment to that resolution was offered to confer upon 
Congress the full power to prescribe the qualifications for 
voters and officeholders, both in the States and in the 
United States. 

It was not adopted then because the time was not ripe. 
But we may accept it to be as certain as any future move- 
ment of this kind can be, that if the Constitution shall be 
amended on the subject of the suffrage that amendment 
will not restore lost power to the States, but will confer 
more power on the National government. The less we 
agitate it the better. 

Numerical Relation of Races. 

We have now reached the stage in our discussion 

27 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

where we may best consider what is, to my mind, the most 
important factor in our problem, namely, the numerical 
relation of the whites and the blacks of the Southern 
States. Having the advantage in land-holdings and all 
other forms of wealth, in intellect, in racial pride and 
strength, our white supremacy can never be overthrown 
except by force of numbers. For many years after the 
war we could not rid ourselves of the apprehension that at 
some day in the future we might be borne down by numer- 
ical majorities. These fears were not wholly unfounded at 
that time. 

In slavery, under the fostering care, as well as the 
commercial interest of the master, the negroes multiplied 
in a greater ratio than the whites. What effect would the 
new social order of freedom have on that ratio of increase? 
Was the Caucasian race of the South face to face with a 
pitiless force that might gradually but inevitably over- 
whelm it by sheer weight of numbers? If so, would that 
race yield, or would it adopt extreme measures for self- 
preservation? These were momentous and perturbing 
questions. 

The census of 1870, coming first after the war, could 
give very little basis for deduction of any sort. But when 
the census figures of 1880 were made known and were 

28 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBI-EM IN THE SOUTH. 

compared with those of 1870, that comparison revealed a 
most ominous situation. Three States, South Carolina, 
Mississippi and Louisiana, each had at that time an actual 
black majority, and the per cent of gain for the negroes in 
the Southern group of States, as shown by the statistical 
experts, was far in excess of that of the whites, being 34.3, 
as against 27.5 per cent from all sources. 

Judge Tourgee's Prophecies Not Fulfilled. 

Judge Albion W. Tourgee, in his book, "An Appeal 
to Caesar," published in 1884, declared that in the year 
1900 every State between Maryland and Texas would 
have a black majority. 

Time has exposed the falsity of that prediction. Not 
one of those States between Maryland and Texas that had 
a white majority in 1880 had lost it in 1900. On the con- 
trary, every such State increased its white majority, while 
South Carolina, from 1890 to 1900, reduced her negro 
majority by 2,412, and Louisiana in the same period 
changed a negro majority of 798 into a white majority of 
78,818. 

The white majority in the ten distinctively Southern 
States was increased by 1,002,662 from 1890 to 1900. In 
the same period our white majority in Georgia rose from 

29 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

119,542 to 146,481. In every Southern State, except 
Mississippi, where pecuhar conditions prevailed, the mar- 
gin of safety for white supremacy, even on the basis of 
numbers, has increased. 

These predictions of negro majorities were not confined 
to writers of fiction, like Judge Tourgee. Professor Gil- 
Uam, a statistician of high repute, announced that among 
the whites of the old slave States the rate of natural in- 
crease from 1870 to 1880 was 20 per cent, while that of 
the blacks in the same States was 35 per cent. 

With these figures as a basis he reached the conclusion 
that the 6,000,000 of Southern blacks in 1880 would in- 
crease to 12,000,000 in 1900. But when the census takers 
of 1900 had counted every colored man, woman and child 
in the whole United States, the total footed up only 8,383,- 
994, which is 3,616,006 less than the professor had pre- 
dicted would be found in the Southern States alone. 

Judge Tourgee, using these percentages, given by Pro- 
fessor Gilliam, argued that all the conditions pointed to a 
greater discrepancy in the future. 

But the census of 1900 shows that the rate of increase 
of the blacks in the South Atlantic States, where the con- 
ditions are most favorable, was only 14.3 per cent from 
1890 to 1900, instead of 35 per cent, as reported for a 

30 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

previous decade, while that of the whites stood substan- 
tially at its previous record of 20 per cent. 

It is now an accepted fact that the census of 1870 did 
not give a complete enumeration of the negroes in the 
South, and this deficiency, by comparison with the more 
accurate census of 1880, necessarily showed a greater pro- 
portionate increase among the negroes than among the 
whites. It was this error in figures that lead to all these 
unfounded predictions, which for a time hung like a pall 
over the South. 

Margin of Safety for White Supremacy Steadily 

Increasing. 

But the census figures of 1890 and 1900 supplied the 
necessary data for a correct comparison. The resulting 
demonstration was that instead of the whites of the South 
being overwhelmed with a deluge of negroes, the certainty 
of contmued white supremacy has steadily increased with 
every decade. 

One cause of this comparative decline of the negroes 
in numbers is to be found in the fact that they have no 
source of supply from immigration, while the whites are 
receiving constant accessions from other States and from 
foreign countries. This influx of whites, comparatively 
small at present, will undoubtedly continue and become 

31 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

larger with our growing industrial prosperity, which was 
never on so firm a foundation as now. The completion of 
the Panama canal will accelerate the development of our 
resources and give new impetus to white immigration, and 
thus help vastly in the solution of our problem. 

A second cause of this comparative decline is that the 
death rate among the negroes is abnormally high. In 
typical Southern cities, where the death rate among the 
whites stands at the moderate figures of lo to 12 per 
thousand, it reaches among the negroes from 20 to 25 per 
thousand. 

It has recently been asserted by some supposedly com- 
petent authorities that the death rate of the negroes is now- 
probably in excess of their birth rate, so that an actual 
numerical decrease has set in, owing largely to the ravages 
of consumption and certain other diseases. Nature exacts 
obedience to her laws — she knows neither pity nor re- 
venge. 

Professor Wilcox of Cornell University and Professor 
Smith of Tulane University, and others, have undertaken a 
more far-reaching investigation into the census figures and 
the facts of ethnological history, and have deduced there- 
from the conclusion that "the negroes will continue to be 
a steadily smaller proportion of our population," and that 

32 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

in the course of time they will die out in America from 
inherent and natural causes. 

Whether these extreme speculations — for they are 
speculations — are well founded or not, yet the established 
facts as to the relative increase of the races have a most 
important bearing on the solution of our problem. They 
show that this problem is not near so difficult as it was 
supposed to be twenty years ago, when false prophets were 
predicting white submergence. 

And more important still, these facts show that the 
white people of the South, and especially of the State of 
Georgia, can now proceed to work out their racial problem 
on lines of justice to the negro, without imperilling white 
supremacy. Those fears which once appalled us, we may 
now dismiss, and let reason resume its sway. 

If future years should develop enough race pride in the 
negroes to make them concentrate in one locality, they 
might gain ascendency there and give the world a prac- 
tical demonstration of their capacity or incapacity as a 
race-force in civilization. But we see no clear signs of 
such a movement now, and Georgia, at least, is in no 
danger of being chosen as the Canaan for that sort of an 

experiment. 

A Working Plan of Justice. 

In seeking a solution of any difficult problem, the first 

33 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

Step should be to eliminate the impossible schemes pro- 
posed, and then concentrate on some line of operation that 
is at least possible. We often hear the epigrammatic dic- 
tum that there are but three possible solutions of our race 
problem : deportation, assimilation or annihilation. When 
we bring our sober senses to bear, all three of these so- 
called possibilities appear to be practical impossibilities. 
Not one of the three presents a working hypothesis. Phys- 
ical facts, alone, prevent deportation. Physical facts, 
stressed by an ineradicable race pride, bar the way against 
assimilation. Physical facts, backed by our religion, our 
civilization, our very selves, forbid annihilation. We can 
not imitate Herod. 

This much seems clear, beyond doubt, that the whites 
are going to stay in this Southland for all time, and so are 
the negroes going to stay here in greater or less propor- 
tions for generations to come. If, then, both races are to 
remain together, the plainly sensible thing for statesmen of 
this day to do is to devise the best modus vivcndi, or 
working plan, by which the greatest good can be accomp- 
lished for ourselves and our posterity. We of this day are 
not expected to overload ourselves with the burden of 
settling all the problems of all future ages. If we take 
good care of the next few centuries, we may well be con- 

34 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

tent to leave some matters to be attended to by our remote 
posterity — aided, of course, by Providence. 

Over against that Trinity of impossibilities — deporta- 
tion, assimilation or annihilation — let us offer the simple 
plan of justice. 

The first and absolutely essential factor in any working 
hypothesis at the South, so far as human ken can now 
foresee, is white suprema'.y — supremacy arising from pres- 
ent natural superiority, but based always on justice to the 
negro. 

Those whose stock in trade is "hating the nigger" may 
easily gain some temporary advantage for themselves in 
our white primaries, where it requires no courage, either 
physical or moral, to strike those who have no power to 
strike back — not even with a paper ballot. But these 
men will achieve nothing permanent for the good of the 
State or of the nation by stirring up race passion and 
prejudice. Injustice and persecution will not solve any of 
the problems of the ages. God did not so ordain His 
universe. 

Justly proud of our race, we refuse to amalgamate with 
the negro. Nevertheless, the negro is a human being, 
under the Fatherhood of God, and consequently within the 
Brotherhood of Man — for those two relations are insep- 

35 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

arably joined together. All soul-possessing creatures must 
be sons of God, and joint heirs of immortahty. 

Moreover, the negro is an American citizen, and is 
protected as such, by guarantees of the Constitution that 
are as irrepealable almost as the Bill of Rights itself. Nor, 
if such a thing a? repealing these guarantees were possible, 
would it be wise for the South. Suppose we admit the 
oft re-iterated proposition that no two races so distinct as 
the Caucasian and the negro can live together on terms of 
perfect equality ; yet it is equally true that without some 
access to the ballot, present or prospective, some partici- 
pation in the government, no inferior race in an elective 
Republic could long protect itself against reduction to 
slavery in many of its substantial forms — and God knows 
the South wants no more of that curse. 

We have long passed the crisis of the disease brought 
on by the existence of slavery in the blood of the Repub- 
lic. Let us now build up the body poHtic in health and 
strength, and guard it against ever again being inoculated 
with a poison even remotely resembling that deadly virus. 
Sporadic cases of peonage have already developed in sev- 
eral States and have been suppressed. Let us provide 
against every appearance of contagion. 

Race Pride Versus Race Prejudice. 

One of the most serious difficulties about the solution 

36 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

of our problem is to be found in getting the dominant 
whites of the South to draw a proper discrimination be- 
tween a laudable pride in our race, and an unworthy preju- 
dice against the negro race. Prejudice of any sort is 
hostile to that sound judgment which the Creator gave us 
for our guide. Race prejudice presents this disturbing 
element in one of its most unreasoning forms. In violence 
it ranks next to religious fanaticism. The one is based on 
a supposed duty to God ; the other on a supposed duty to 
one's race-blood. The deeper this sense of duty, the more 
hardened the mind against every appeal to reason. In 
persecuting the early Christians, Paul thought he was do- 
ing his duty to God. The men who hanged the witches in 
New England thought they were doing their duty. 

So, perhaps, may think that ex-preacher, who in our 
own day has turned playwright, and calling to his aid all 
the accessories of the stage and all the realisms of the liv- 
ing drama, seeks to fan into flame the fiercest passions of 
the whites and blacks. His chief purpose, so far as one 
can logically deduce it, seems to be to force into immedi- 
ate conflagration combustible materials, which his heated 
imagination tells him must burn sometime in the future. 
Apparently he chafes under the delay of Providence in 
bringing on the ghastly spectacle, and yearns to witness 

37 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

with his own eyes in the flesh that reign of hell on earth 
before his own redeemed soul is ushered into the calm, 
serene and gentle presence of Him whose gospel of love 
and light he once preached to erring men. 

If the true purpose of this reverend gentleman be to 
preserve the blood of our race in its purity by creating a 
sentiment against intermarriage of the whites and blacks, 
let him confine his play to Chicago and Boston and New 
York and Philadelphia and other like places, where some 
few of such marriages are said to occur. As for us in the 
South, we need no artificial stimulant to arouse our people 
against that sort of racial intermarriage. Our law forbids 
it, and that is one law no man or woman ever violates. 

Race Purity. 

In this connection let us of the South realize the hard 
fact that the greatest obstacle to the preservation of the 
purity of the blood of our race, about which we hear so 
much in this day, was removed when slavery was abol- 
ished. That institution, as indisputable facts too plainly 
show, wrought much contamination of Caucasian blood. 

In Virginia in 1630 a white man-servant was publicly 
flogged for consorting with a negro slave, and was re- 
quired to make public confession of his guilt on the follow- 

38 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

ing Sabbath — but clearly the custom of flogging for that 
offense must soon have fallen into "innocuous desuetude." 

In calmly considering now the situation that confronted 
our statesmen of the ante-bellum period, that which most 
astounds us is their apparent failure to foresee what would 
have been the inevitable consequence of an indefinite 
continuance of slavery in its effect on race purity and on 
relative race numbers. The ratio of increase of the ne- 
groes was far in excess of the whites. The great laboring 
middle class, which forms the backbone of every nation's 
pluck and power, was fast migrating Westward, and the 
remaining population was rapidly crystalizing into an 
upper class of white slave holders and a lower class of 
negro slaves — the latter out-multiplying their masters in 
numbers. Another one hundred years of slavery would in 
all probability have doomed the South to absolute negro 
domination by mere weight of numbers whenever emanci- 
pation should come — and come it was sure to do at some 
time in the evolution of the elemental forces that were at 
work. 

If there be a Providence who watches over the affairs 
of nations and "slumbers not nor sleeps," we may say in 
all reverence that he would have made an almost inex- 

39 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

cusable blunder if he had delayed much longer the aboli- 
tion of slavery. 

Social recognition of the true dignity of labor, which is 
so necessary to the growth of a vigorous and self-respect- 
ing middle class, could not be maintained in the presence 
of slavery where manual toil is so generally regarded as a 
badge of servitude. 

Negro Race Projected Forward Beyond Natural 

Development. 

When a subject people in the hard school of experi- 
ence gradually assert themselves and evolve from within 
the physical, mental and spiritual forces that achieve their 
freedom, as did the Anglo-Saxons from under the yoke of 
their Norman conquerors, they come forth by natural 
growth prepared for the duties and responsibilities of self- 
government. 

But the negro as a race had undergone no such pro- 
cess of evolution. His transportation from Africa to 
America and his transition from slavery to freedom were 
both the results of external impositions and not of internal 
development. The power came from without, not from 
within. He did not win his freedom. It was bestowed 
upon him. 

Granting that he is only a backward member of the 

40 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE TROBLLM IN IHE SOUTH. 

great human family, which as most evolutionists and 
Christians beheve, is moving steadily on toward the distant 
goal of Millennial perfection, yet we cannot fail to see that 
the negro race was suddenly projected forward into a stage 
of civilization many generations in advance of its own 
natural development. 

Is it any wonder, then, that the negro as a race should 
not be altogether fitted to the laws and customs and politi- 
cal institutions of those among whom his lot was cast? 

Again, is it any wonder that this advanced civilization 
should find it necessary at times to apply sterner penalties 
for the curbing of his savage instincts when he was freed 
from the accustomed control of his master? 

Unfortunately, soon after emancipation, some of the 
worst specimens of the blacks began to commit an unpar- 
donable crime. Instantly the white man placed over the 
door of his home, whether it were proud mansion or hum- 
ble cabin, a warning more terrible in its meaning than that 
which Dante dreamed he saw over the gateway to hell : 
**Let the brute who enters here leave all hope behind." 
In the presence of that crime, men do not think, they only 
feel. 

But how shall we fix bounds for those who rush madly 
outside the limits of the law? Lynching began with this 

41 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

and similar savage crimes. But, alas, where will they all 
end? Let us hope that these excesses of both races are 
merely incidental factors in our problem, and that they will 
soon diminish and eventually disappear. 

Abhorrent as are the crimes of some degenerate mem- 
bers of the negro race, we Southern people can never for- 
get the simple faith and tragic loyalty of those thousands 
of slaves who guarded and protected the women and chil- 
dren at home, while the men were at the front fighting to 
drive back an invading foe whose victory meant freedom 
to those slaves themselves. 

Negro Military Salute Confederate Monument. 
Nor is there a total dearth of touching incidents in 
these latter days. Only about a year or so ago, a negro 
military company from Savannah came marching in full 
array up Broadway in Augusta. In front of them, rising 
toward the sky in beautiful, artistic proportions, stood a 
marble monument erected by loving women to the dead 
Confederacy. At its base were statues of Lee and Jackson 
and Cobb and Walker, and hfted high up above them all 
on the top of the towering shaft stood the statue of a pri- 
vate Confederate soldier. No white military company, no 
camp of maimed Confederate veterans ever pass that 
monument without giving it the honor of a form.al salute. 

42 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

As the negro military comes nearer, one of two gentle- 
tlemen standing in the doorway of a building nearby says : 
"Let us watch now and see if those fellows will salute the 
Confederate monument." The other gentleman explains 
that no salute will be given because it will not occur to the 
commanding officer, but that the omission will not be in- 
tended as an affront. Scarcely are the words spoken, 
when the negro captain, in clear, ringing tones that prove 
the sincerity of his tribute, gives the command to salute, 
and every black arm instantly obeys that command. 
There was cheering among the white bystanders. 
When the great Wade Hampton lay upon his death 
bed he made this prayer: "God bless all my people — 
white and black — God bless them all." 

Suffrage Qualifications. 
While the issue of political control under the fifteenth 
amendment still confronted the Southern States, Missis- 
sippi, having the greatest negro majority, led off with her 
Constitution of 1891 providing an educational qualification 
for voting. There being more illiterate blacks than illiter- 
ate whites in Mississippi, the necessary effect of this law 
was to promote white supremacy. But the law on its face 
did not discriminate against the negro on account of his 
race. It covered whites and blacks alike. 

43 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

The Supreme Court of the United States promptly de- 
cided that this Mississippi law did not violate the Federal 
Constitution. What the effect of its practical administra- 
tion has been need not now be discussed. 

Other States followed with similar laws, based prima- 
rily on educational qualifications, but soon a proviso was 
evolved to preserve the ballot to illiterate whites. An hon- 
est administration of a suffrage law based on an educa- 
tional qualification would necessarily disfranchise a great 
many whites. Hence a proviso was devised to the effect 
that the educational qualification should not apply to any 
person, nor to the descendant of any person, who could 
have voted at some past date, say, for example, January 
I, 1867, when negroes as a class were not allowed to vote 
This proviso was popularly known as the "Grandfather 
clause, ' because under it, a man otherwise disqualified, 
might, so to speak, inherit the right of suffrage from his 
grandfather. 

The manifest purpose of this clause was to nullify the 
educational requirement of the State law as to the whites, 
while leaving it in full force as to the negroes, and in this 
way to get around the 15th amendment of the Federal 
Constitution, which forbids discrimination on account of 
race. 



44 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

The Supreme Court of the United States has gone as 
far as any one could have expected it to go in upholding 
the reserved rights of the States on the subject of suffra^ 
But that court has never directly nor indirectly sanctioned 
the vahdity of any suffrage law containing the Grandfather 
clause or any other clause based on the same principle. 

Whenever the Supreme Court shall take judicial notice, 
as it will do, of the historical fact that on the date selected 
for the Grandfather clause to begin to operate, say January 
I, 1867, the negroes as a class had no right to vote, or 
when that undeniable or easily proven fact is made to 
appear by evidence, this device of the Grandfather clause 
must fall of its own crookedness. A preference to one 
race is necessarily the legal equivalent of a discrimination 
against the other race. 

It will mark a new departure in American constitu- 
tional law when the right to vote is made inheritable from 
the non-transmissible attributes of an ancestor instead of 
being based on the personal attributes of the voter. 

It will mark a still further departure in judicial con- 
struction when the Supreme Court finds in this new doc- 
trine a legal justification for sanctioning the race discrim- 
ination forbidden by the fifteenth amendment. 

The Mississippi law, the only one ever squarely con- 

45 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

sidered and directly construed by the Supreme Court, 170 
U. S.- 213, does not contain the Grandfather clause. That 
was a device of later invention. 

The case of Giles v. Harris, 189 U. S. 475, involving 
the Alabama law, was dismissed in the Supreme Court for 
want of jurisdiction in the lower court— but Justices 
Brewer, Brown and Harlan dissented in vigorous terms. 

The latest case, of Jones v. Montague, 194 U. S. 147, 
involving the Virginia law, was dismissed because the act 
sought to be enjoined — the issuing of certificates of elec- 
tion, etc., to members of Congress — had already been 
done, and the congressmen had taken their seats before 
the case was reached in the Supreme Court. 

Indeed, it is no secret that those lawyers who under- 
take to defend these disfranchisement enactments, place 
their chief reliance in the technical difificulties of getting 
the merits of the question before the Supreme Court. It 
goes without saying, however, that lawyers can be found 
to surmount those technical difificulties, and at the bar of 
the Supreme Court confront the "Grandfather" clause of 
the State Constitutions with the "anti-race-discrimination" 
clause of the Federal Constitution. 

The result scarcely admits of a doubt. 

Disfranchisement Movement in Georgia. 

What, then, shall we, as Georgians and Americans, 

46 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

true to our own great State, and true to the greater nation 
of which it is a part, say of the movement which is now 
being so freely discussed, and which has seemingly gained 
some headway, to so amend our State Constitution as to 
disfranchise the negroes as a race? 

We have read in the public press repeated statements 
that prominent leaders are openly announcing their inten- 
tion to "disfranchise the negro," and promising to "elim- 
inate him from politics." Not only so, but they further 
promise to accomplish that end through a so-called educa- 
tional qualification or understanding clause, and at the 
same time not to deprive a single white man of his ballot, 
no matter how illiterate or ignorant he may be. 

I might hesitate here and now, even at the last mo- 
ment, to proceed further with the discussion of this branch 
of my subject if the facts as to intentions and methods, as 
I have just stated them, were at all in dispute. But as I 
understand it, there is no disposition to deny them — 
rather, an increasing boldness in asserting them. There- 
fore we may quite properly, it seems to me, proceed to 
draw some necessary deductions from those admitted facts 
as they bear on the law and morals of the situation. 

How, then, are these two purposes, to put out all the 
negroes and put in all the whites, to be accomplished in 

47 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

the face of the prohibition of the fifteenth amendment? 
Clearly, it can not be done by open avowal in the body of 
the law, because in that event, the law would convict itself 
in any court in the land. How, then, is this avowed pur- 
pose to be accomplished? Pardon me, my friends, but let 
us face the truth ; the scheme must be to disfranchise the 
negro by a fraudulent administration of the law. In no 
other way is it possible to produce the promised results. 
Legislative ingenuity must be backed up by administrative 
fraud — else the avowed purpose cannot be accomplished. 

It must be admitted that the machinery of the pro- 
posed law could be easily perverted to fraudulent pur- 
poses. Before a citizen can register to vote, he is to be 
required to read and explain, or to be able to understand, 
any paragraph of the State Constitution. Now, we lawyers 
all know that there are some parts of our Constitution that 
the Supreme Court judges themselves have never been 
able fully to explain — even granting that they understand 
them all. But who are to judge of this explanation or 
understanding? The registrars, of course. Suppose the 
most learned explanation could be given, who will vouch 
that the registrars themselves will understand it, or will 
accept it as satisfactory? 

Of course, the officers of registration are to be white. 

48 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

An easy paragraph for a white applicant; a difficult para- 
graph for a negro applicant ; the acceptance of any sort of 
an explanation from a white applicant; the rejection of 
any sort of an explanation from a negro applicant — there 
you have the hidden cards with which the game of cheat is 
to be played. And it is on this miserable, bare-faced 
scheme of fraud that our proud and noble people are 
asked to rest their safety and their civilization. 

How long do the advocates of this method of dis- 
franchisement think they can expose their purpose to the 
political eye and keep it concealed from the judicial eye? 
How long can they proclaim it on the hustings and hush it 
in the court house? 

Referring to one of these laws, a learned commentator 
on our Supreme Court decisions has said: "If in the 
hght of their history and conditions and the avowed pur- 
pose of the authors of the laws, their objects are clothed in 
statutes so worded that the real designs are not expressed 
in terms, the situation would seem to be one to require the 
court to reason from cause to effect." 

The court, in construing the fourteenth amendment 
(ii8 U. S. 356) has said: "Though the law itself be fair 
on its face and impartial in appearance, yet if it be applied 
and administered by public authority with AN EVIL EYE 

49 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

AND AN UNEQUAL HAND SO as practically to make unjust 
and unequal discriminations between persons in similar 
circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal 
justice is still within the prohibition of the Constitution." 

Nor can escape be found in that Hne of decisions by 
the Supreme Court to the effect that the prohibition of the 
fifteenth amendment applies to State action and not to acts 
of private citizens. The registrars who are to enforce this 
disfranchisement law are officers and agents of the State. 
The Supreme Court (lOO U. S. 339) have further said: 
"Whoever by virtue of his public position under a State 
government, deprives another of life, liberty or property 
without due process of law, or denies or takes away the 
equal protection of the law, violates the inhibition of the 
fourteenth amendment, and as he acts in the name of, and 
for, the State and is clothed with her power, HIS ACT IS 
HER ACT." 

This same principle of responsibility will be applied to 
the registrars under this disfranchisement law. Their acts 
will be the acts of the State, and will consequently come 
within the prohibition of the fifteenth amendment, and will 
also be within the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, where 
alleged violations of the law will be tried. 

But aside from these legal aspects of the matter, let us 

50 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

ask ourselves if there is not a more serious practical diffi- 
culty to be overcomCo These registrars, as officers, must 
take the usual oath to perform their duties impartially 
under the law. Let us put the plain, blunt question : How 
many counties in Georgia can be relied on to furnish three 
citizens for registrars who will agree in advance to violate 
their solemn oaths? Will not honest men point at them 
the finger of scorn ? 

The great John C. Calhoun sought to nullify a Federal 
statute law on the tariff by State action because he be- 
Heved it to be in violation of the Federal Constitution, 
which he loved and honored. 

But these latter day nullifiers are seeking to nullify the 
Federal Constitution by a State law — no, not by a State 
law itself, but by the fraudulent administration of a State 
law. No power on earth could have made Mr. Calhoun 
stoop to such chicanery — he was fashioned in a nobler 
mould. What a contrast between the great nullifier and 
these little nullifiers ! 

The abuses to which the broad discretionary powers of 
the registrars under these disfranchisement laws might be 
carried in times of fierce partisan politics are absolutely 
unlimited. We need not flatter ourselves that white men 
will never be the victims of such abuses. When moral 

51 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

character is once defiled and fraud seeks its own selfish 
ends, it will not stop at the color line. 

One Danger in Educational Qualification. 

There can be no legal objection, whenever the public 
necessity requires it, to establishing a reasonable educa- 
tional qualification for voters, provided that qualification is 
fairly and honestly applied. But if this educational quaH- 
fication is to be used as a fraudulent subterfuge to disfran- 
chise the negro, then there is another very serious conse- 
quence which will necessarily follow. 

If by appeals to race prejudice and fear these negro 
disfranchisers establish the educational test in fulfilment of 
their promise to " eliminate the negro from politics," then 
of necessity, these same leaders and their followers must 
recognize that from their point of view it is not the 
IGNORANT, but the EDUCATED negroes who will be the 
most dangerous poHtical enemies of the whites. 

The question will at once arise, why should the white 
people create dangerous political enemies by allowing the 
negroes to be educated? Why not "eliminate them from 
politics" by keeping them in ignorance? There is no 
escape from the logic of this argument if the premise be 
correct. Thus we would find ourselves committed to the 
degrading policy of enforcing ignorance on a weaker race, 

52 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

with its attendant results of peonage and semi-slavery, 
from which all good men would pray for deliverance. 
Division of School Funds on Race Lines. 

Even now there are signs of a movement in Georgia to 
give the negro schools only that pittance of money arising 
from the negro's taxes. A law to that effect has already 
been declared invalid by the State court in North Carolina 
(94 N. C. 709) ; also by the State court in Kentucky (83 
Ky. 49) ; and also by the Federal court in three decisions 
from Kentucky (16 Fed. R. p. 297; 23 Fed. R. 634, and 
72 Fed R. 689.) 

In our own State a bill to the same effect was passed 
in 1888 for a local school system, and Governor John B. 
Gordon, while Hon. Clifford Anderson was attorney gen- 
eral, vetoed it on the ground that it was against sound 
poHcy and a violation of the Constitution of the State and 
the United States. 

There is nothing in the decision of our State Supreme 
Court in the Eatonton case (80 Ga. 755) nor in the Rich- 
mond County High School case (103 Ga. 641) to sustain 
the proposition that the common school funds of the State, 
or of any subdivision of the State, can be divided between 
the races in proportion to the property or taxes of each. 
On the contrary, in the latter case, our State court said : 

53 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

" So far as the record discloses, both races have the same 
faciUties of attending them" (the free common schools). 
And the United States Supreme Court, in reviewing this 
Georgia case (175 U. S. 528) say it is an admitted prin- 
ciple of law that the "benefits and burdens of public tax- 
ation must be shared by citizens without discrimination 
against any class on account of their race." 

Along this same line spoke Governor Charles J. Jen- 
kins, known to Georgians as the "Noblest Roman of Them 
All," when he took the chair as president of the Constitu- 
tional convention of 1877. He said: 

"I utter no caution against class legislation or discrim- 
ination against our citizens of African descent. I feel a 
perfect assurance that there is no member of this body 
who would propose such action, and if there were, he 
would soon find himself without a following." 

These are the words of a high-minded statesman — not 
of a time-serving politician. There are many differences 
between these two types of public men. One difference is 
that a pohtician seeks to find out what public opinion is 
and hastens to follow it, while a statesman seeks to find 
out what public opinion ought to be and helps to mould it. 
Our late Chancellor Hill, whose untimely death is so 
deeply deplored by us all, belonged to that higher class of 

54 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

moulders of public opinion. By example, as well as by 
precept, he led the way to the nobler ends of life. 
Should Georgia Follow Other States? 

Surely nothing but the direst necessity of self-preserva- 
tion could induce any people to resort to suth suffrage 
expedients as are now being proposed to the people of 
Georgia. Nothing less than an impending overthrow of 
white civilization by negro domination could excuse such 
extreme measures. But if our discussion has shown any- 
thing, it has shown that Georgia is not now in danger of 
negro domination. 

One argument that is being pressed upon our people is 
that Georgia should follow the example of other Southern 
States that have passed similar disfranchisement laws. But 
let us ask, why should Georgia follow them? Is there 
anything in their examples on this subject worthy of our 
imitation? If their necessities compelled such questionable 
action, let us sympathize with them in their extremity. 
But let us not imitate them when no such necessity besets 
us. Did not Georgia first redeem herself after reconstruc- 
tion? Has she not kept abreast of her sister States in 
material, intellectual and moral progress? Is she not still 
the Empire State of the South? What State can show a 
a cleaner oflEicial record for thirty years? Rather let 

55 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

Georgia continue to lead in wise and conservative states- 
manship. On all fundamental questions our white people 
are sufficiently united in thought and purpose to come 
together in a solid phalanx if the negroes should ever 
return to the ballot box in sufficient numbers on one side 
of an issue to jeopardize the public safety. 

As a legal means of maintaining white supremacy, no 
plan yet devised approaches in effectiveness our party 
primary system, in combination with the cumulative poll 
tax provision of the Constitution. 

Whatever may be the final political status of the negro, 
we are now undeniably in a transition stage of evolution. 
It is scarcely conceivable that the conditions created by 
the disfranchisement laws of some Southern States can be 
permanent. The battle for supremacy between those laws 
and the Federal Constitution remains to be fought out. 
If the Federal Constitution proves victorious, as it is very 
apt to do, then the entire electoral system of these States 
may have to be changed. 

' On the other hand, Georgia, through her superior 
statesmanship, has put herself in a position of safety, ready 
to take advantage of whatever hopeful developments the 
future may unfold. She has violated no Federal law. 

56 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

She has maintained white supremacy with the least possi- 
ble friction, and can continue to so maintain it. 

Not only is this campaign against the negro unneces- 
sary and unjust, but it is most inopportune at this juncture. 
When every County in the State is calling loudly for more 
labor to serve the household and till the fields and develop 
our resources, why should we seek to enact more oppres- 
sive laws against the labor we now have? 

We do not know what shifting phases this vexing race 
problem may assume, but we may rest in the conviction 
that its ultimate solution must be reached by proceeding 
along the lines of honesty and justice. Let us not in 
cowardice or in want of faith, needlessly sacrifice our 
higher ideals of private and public life. Race differences 
may necessitate social distinctions. But race differences 
can not repeal the moral law. 

The Moral Law — Its Origin and Sanction. 

What is this thing we call the moral law ? Is it a mere 
weak sentiment, suitable only for children and preachers 
and Sunday school teachers? Or is it the fiat of Nature 
and Nature's God, commanding obedience from all men 
under the sanction of inevitable penalties? We will waive 
all questions as to weight of authority, and reason out the 
matter for ourselves. 

57 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTHo 

Whence come our morals or ethical conceptions? 
Briefly let us summarize : 

First: The theological school rests the foundation of 
morals on divine commandment or revelation, which quick- 
ens the conscience. 

God spake through Moses, the Prophets and the Christ. 

Second : The psychological school traces the source 
of morals to an instinct or sense that is innate in the mind 
itself — the conscience. 

The philosopher and metaphysician, Immanuel Kant, 
reasoned back to his celebrated postulate of a ** categorical 
imperative" caU to duty. 

Third i The utilitarian school evolves morals from 
human experience, sanctioning as "good" or "right'* that 
conduct which has proven beneficial, and condemning as 
"bad" or "wrong" that conduct which has proven injuri- 
ous, thus Creating and developing the conscience by suc- 
cessive stages of experimental knowledge. 

Herbert Spencer thus evolved his system of utilitarian 
ethics till it almost flowered out in the beauty of the 
"Golden Rule/' 

Professor Huxley, discussing the scientific doctrine of 
causation, says: "The safety of morality lies in a real 
and living belief in that fixed order of nature which sends 

58 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

social disorganization upon the track of immorality as 
surely as it sends physical disease after physical tres- 
passers." 

It is not necessary for us to determine how much of 
truth there is in each of these schools of thought. Enough 
for us to know that all three reach substantially the same 
conclusion as to right rules of conduct for men. By differ- 
ent routes they arrive at the same goal. In reasoning they 
are three ; in acting they are one. Here is a subject on 
which religion and science are in full accord, namely, that 
the moral law is the wisest rule of human conduct. 

So much for the individual man. 

The Moral Law Applies to States as Well as 
to Individuals. 

Now, does the same moral law apply to States and 
Nations as well as to individuals? Or are there two codes 
oi morality, one for individuals and another for aggrega- 
tions of individuals? Can we practice fraud as a collective 
body of citizens and still preserve our personal integrity as 
individual citizens? 

We might quote Mr. Jefferson as an authority for the 
doctrine that " moral duties are as obligatory on nations as 
on individuals." But again let us waive authorit)^ and 
reason out our own conclusions. We will test the question 

59 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

by the standards of the three schools of thought first 
named. 

If we assume that the theological school is correct, it is 
manifest that there can not be a code of public morals 
different in principle from the code of private morals. 
God must deal with individuals and nations alike, because 
the former are the responsible units of the latter. 

If we assume that the psychological school is correct, 
it is equally manifest that the conscience, being an innate 
mental quality, cannot reverse its action by changing from 
private to public capacity, from individual to collective 
functions. 

If we assume that the utilitarian school is correct, it 
ought to be equally as clear that the rule of conduct which 
experience has proven to be beneficial- as between individ- 
uals, is also beneficial as between States under like con- 
ditions. 

It is true that aggregations of individuals, by reason of 
divided responsibility, do not usually act up to the code of 
morals recognized by single individuals. That historical 
fact shows the imperfection of our past civiHzation, and 
calls upon us for better work in the future. No one 
accepts the condition as permanent or satisfactory. The 
great task of civilization, the dearest hope of philosophers 

60 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

and noble-minded statesmen, is to constantly improve that 
condition and bring nations more under the sway of the 
moral law. Though perfection be unattainable, every step 
is progress. 

In proportion as international intercourse becomes 
more free will a code of international ethics, based on a 
code of personal ethics, be developed, to the immeasurable 
advantage of all concerned. Such is the doctrine under- 
lying The Hague tribunal, which has already done so 
much for the peace of the world. 

One of the noblest tributes ever paid to Gladstone was 
that he had applied the moral law to British politics. 

It was Aristides, surnamed the Just — a brave soldier, 
a successful general, a man of sound practical judgment, 
not a mere dreamer — who, when named by the Athenians 
to consider a secret plan, suggested by Themistocles, to 
gain naval supremacy for Athens by burning the ships of 
her allies, reported against the unscrupulous scheme and 
said : " What Themistocles proposes might be to your 
present advantage, but O Athenians, it is not just." 

Speaking of the ideal, universal, moral code, one of 
the least sentimental of modern scientific writers says : 
"Although its realization may lie in the unseen future, 
civilization must hold fast to it, if it would be any more 

6i 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

than a blind natural process ; and it is certainly the noblest 
function of social science to point out the wearisome way 
along which mankind, dripping with blood, yet pants for 
the distant goal." 

Another deep thinker, summing up the facts of history 
and the reasonings of philosophers, says : " That the 
moral law is the unchanging law of social progress in 
human society is the lesson which appears to be written 
over all things." 

Solution of Race Problem : Give Negro Justice. 

The foundation of the moral law is justice. Let us 
solve the negro problem by giving the negro justice and 
applying to him the recognized principles of the moral 
law. 

This does not require social equality. It does not re- 
quire that we should surrender into his inexperienced and 
incompetent hands the reins of political government. But 
it does require that we recognize his fundamental rights as 
a man, and that we judge each individual according to his 
own qualifications, and not according to the lower average 
characteristics of his race. Political rights can not justly 
be withheld from those American citizens of an inferior or 
backward race who raise themselves up to the standard of 

62 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

citizenship which the superior race applies to its own 
members. 

It is true that the right of suffrage is not one of those 
inahenable rights of man, like life, liberty and the pursuit 
of happiness, as enumerated in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, but the right of exemption from discrimination 
in the exercise of suffrage on account of race, is one of the 
guaranteed constitutional rights of all American citizens. 

We of the South are an integral part of this great 
country. We should stand ready to make every sacrifice 
demanded by honor and permitted by wisdom to remove 
the last vestige of an excuse for the perpetuation of that 
spirit of sectionalism which excludes us from the full par- 
ticipation in governmental honors to which our brain and 
character entitles us. 

Let us respect the National laws to the limit of endur- 
ance, and if that limit should be passed, let us resort to 
some means of redress more typical of Southern manhood 
than fraudulent subterfuge. The future material prosper- 
ity of the South is already assured. Let us resolve that 
there shall remain ingrained in the moral fibre of our New 
South the high character of our Old South — which can 
best be described in the memorable words of Edmund 

63 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

Burke as "that sensibility of principle, that chastity of 
honor which felt a stain like a wound." 

We cannot afford to sacrifice our ideas of justice, of 
law and of religion for the purpose of preventing the negro 
from elevating himself. If we wish to preserve the wide 
gap between our race and his in the onward progress of 
civilization, let us do it by lifting ourselves up, not by 
holding him down. 

If, as some predict, the negro in the distant future must 
fail and fall by the wayside in the strenuous march of the 
nations, let him fall by his own inferiority, and not by our 
tyranny. Give him a fair chance to work out what is in 
him. 

Carl McKinley, that brilliant and noble-hearted author 
of "An Appeal to Pharoah," who advocated so earnestly 
and so eloquently the impracticable policy of deportation, 
declared himself on this subject as follows: 

"We should have learned by this time moreover, that 
we cannot treat the negro with injustice, however disguised, 
without sharing the consequences with him. * * * jt 
would be a foul wrong to beat him back in his upward 
struggle, and consign him to a lower plane and establish 
him on it." 

If the negro as a race is to be disfranchised regardless 

64 



?» 



10.4 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

of the personal qualifications of meritorious individual 
members of that race, consider for a moment some of the 
changes we must make in many of the fundamental doc- 
trines lying at the base of our government. The revised 
version of our political Bible would have to read some- 
thing like this: "No taxation without representation — 
except as to negroes;" "equal rights to all — except as 
to negroes;" "all men are created equal — except as 
to negroes." 

No Recantation of Jefferson's Doctrine. 
Some modern critics seriously suggest that we should 
amend that paragraph of the Declaration of Independence 
which asserts the equal rights of men, so as to adjust it 
more accurately to historical and scientific facts. But that 
epoch-making document needs no alteration upon the sub- 
ject of human rights when interpreted as it was intended 
to be interpreted by the man who drafted it. Mark you, 
Mr. Jefferson did not write "x'lll men are born free," as 
the quotation is sometimes given. That looser language is 
found in the Constitution of Massachusetts, not in the 
Declaration of Independence. Such an assertion would 
have been disproved by the historical fact of slavery then 
existing. What Mr. Jefferson wrote was : "All men are 
created equal." That is to say, not equal in exterior cir- 

65 



SLAVERY AND THE RACE PROBLEM IN THE SOUTH. 

cumstances, nor in physical or mental attributes, but equal 
in the sight of God and just human law, in their inalienable 
rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Amer- 
icans want no recantation of that declaration. It is the 
political corollary of the Christian doctrine of the justice 
and the Fatherhood of God. Let it stand as it was penned 
by Jefferson, an ennobling, even though unattainable, ideal, 
demanded by the spiritual nature of man — one of those 
ideals that have done more to lift up humanity and to 
build up civilization than all the gold from all the mines of 
all the world. 



66 



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